safe space
by moirariordan
Summary: "The key to a good night's sleep," Felicity says proudly. "I take a bad dream and make it better." post ep for 2x10.


Oliver's been here before, though he can't quite remember when or why, but he recognizes the wooden floors and the blue curtains. He remembers that he liked the blue curtains, and that when he'd first walked inside his boots had made hollow thumping noises as he'd walked. Where he'd been walking, he couldn't say.

"Here," Felicity says, plopping down beside him on the floor, all knees and elbows. She's wearing blue stockings, that match the curtains, and her earrings are so long they brush her shoulders as she moves her head. "This is for you, just like you asked."

She hands him a Sundollar coffee cup. Oliver holds it in both hands, trying to absorb the warmth into his skin. His clothes are wet, he just realized.

"Thank you," he says.

"It's a vanilla latte," she informs him. "I know you like them, even if you don't ever get them, because of course you do. Who doesn't like vanilla lattes?"

"I don't remember asking you for coffee," Oliver says.

"It was implied." Felicity nudges him gently. "Go on."

Oliver takes a sip. It's the best latte he's ever tasted.

"I was thinking about redoing this room," Felicity says thoughtfully. She leans back and splays out her legs, crossing her ankles. She's got these black heels on, clunky Doc Marten-looking things that she'd normally never wear. Not that Oliver pays attention, much, just-he notices things sometimes, it's hard not to. "What do you think about eggshell for the walls?"

This is her apartment. He doesn't know why he didn't remember before. "What color is eggshell? White?"

"_Nooo_," Felicity says, "it's eggshell. Eggshell is eggshell, Oliver."

"My mistake." Oliver takes another drink of his latte. It's cooler now, and easier to drink, and he thinks there might be an extra shot of espresso in it. It's his drink from before the island, the exact latte he'd pick up on Sunday mornings on the way home from wherever he'd woken up. Sugar-free vanilla latte, extra shot, not so hot. He hasn't thought about it in years. "I think it looks fine the way it is."

"Really?" Felicity squints skeptically at the walls. "You like the brown?"

"It suits you," he says. "It's warm in here. Nice."

"That's really nice," Felicity says, sounding a little surprised. "Maybe I'll keep it then. Redo my bedroom instead. The walls are like, ugly blue in there, with red stripes down at the bottom. Whoever lived here before me had some real weird ideas about color coordination."

It occurs to Oliver that he's probably dreaming, although he can't be too sure since this is not something he usually dreams about; drinking coffee and talking about paint colors with Felicity.

"What do you usually dream about then?" Felicity asks. "Just curious. You don't have to tell me."

"I dream about the island," Oliver tells her. Truth is easy, when you're dreaming. Worse, truth is inevitable in dreams, dreams _are _truth. Dreams are Shado, turning over to see her body in bed next to him, blood all over Raisa's nice, clean sheets, on his skin, under his nails, in his mouth, behind his teeth. Dreams are Thea, buried face down in the sand next to their father, mud in her hair and her hands tied behind her back; his mother in the cage on the _Amazo_, Felicity under Ivo's knife, Diggle cold and still on the gurney, dead from Deadshot's arrows. Oliver doesn't like his dreams, usually.

"That sounds horrible," Felicity says. "Here, let's make this one better. Okay? Come on."

She offers him a hand and he takes it, abandoning the latte. As they stand up, the walls change, soft, toffee brown melting into the cool, silver walls of Verdant.

Felicity smiles in satisfaction, walking over to the bar and hitching herself up, one foot going up in the air as she reaches over to grab a bottle of wine from below the bar. "Oof. Oh, Cheval des Andes, 2005. Not bad."

He keeps the bar stocked with red, for those nights when she pushes back from her computers and rubs her eyes beneath her glasses so hard she leaves streaks of makeup across her cheekbones, little smears of black on her fingertips. She'll go upstairs and find the best bottle they have and open it with the cork opener she keeps on her keys and sometimes he and Digg will join her, sitting in the middle of his empty club, talking and laughing about nothing that has to do with anything at all.

Maybe that happens. Or maybe it's something he just wants to happen, he can't be sure right at this very second.

"Why here?" Oliver asks, watching her stretch over the bar again, straining to reach the wine glasses even though there's a set of whiskey tumblers much closer, like seriously _right there_ - it's such a typical Felicity thing to do. Do it right, if you're going to do it, Oliver, jeez.

"Like I know?" Felicity shrugs, plopping back down on her feet with a sigh. "Your dream, your rules. Maybe you feel safe here."

Safe at Verdant. Right. "Safe is a sort of relative concept."

"No, safe is safe," Felicity argues. She pauses to pour, carefully angling the lip of the bottle so it doesn't drip. "Safe is my mom's house, my old room with my grandpa's quilt around my shoulders. My apartment during a snowstorm. And...the lair. Sitting at my desk with you and Digg sparring somewhere behind me."

It's a nice thought. Maybe it's even true. "I'm glad you have that," he says honestly, reaching out to take the wine glass she hands out, wanting to reach out with his other hand too, wanting to touch her hair, maybe, or her face. Her glasses are glinting a little from some winking light in the ceiling; it makes her look sort of magical. "That's an important thing to have. Feeling safe somewhere."

"You say that like you don't have it," Felicity says. "Maybe you should look into finding it. If it's all that important."

Oliver feels ashamed just thinking of it. It seems so presumptuous, to seek out something like that. To want to feel safe, and warm, and loved. To want much of anything.

"I hate it when you do that stuff," Felicity says, looking sad. She reaches out and touches the back of his wrist, and her touch burns, like when you come in from the snow and your mother touches your face with her warm hand, and you feel like you're melting. Like that. "I never know what to say to you. You'd think I would, like it'd be some gift that comes along with all the babbling - knowing what to say. But I never do."

"You do all right," Oliver says. "There's no right thing to say, for anything, I think."

"It's not really about the words," Felicity offers.

"Right."

Felicity nudges him again, and he takes an obedient sip of wine. It tastes even better than the latte.

"We don't have much longer, do we," he says.

"Probably not." Felicity does this thing, when she drinks wine that she likes, she sort of smacks her lips after she takes a drink. He thinks, what would she do if I gave her wine she didn't like. He thinks, I want to kiss her when she does that. "I think this is good, though. This has been a good dream, a good way to spend this time. What do you think?"

"A plus," Oliver says. "A dream I'd like to remember, for sure."

"Maybe that's the key," Felicity says cheerfully. "Me. I'm the key."

"You're certainly the key to something."

"The key to a good night's sleep," Felicity says proudly. "I take a bad dream and make it better."

"You make a lot of things better," Oliver says. The honesty doesn't chafe the way it normally would. Maybe it's the wine. Maybe she's what makes him feel safe.

"Try to remember that when you wake up, okay," Felicity says, stepping in close. This has to be a dream for sure, because she'd never do that in real life, step into him like that, lean her forehead on his chest. Sometimes he watches her hands move while she talks and thinks about what it would feel like to have her reach out and grab his, tangle their fingers together as they walk down streets and hallways together. It's stupid. He's stupid. "Remember what it feels like."

"I'll try." He hardly remembers the good dreams. Most of the time it's just the bad that lingers, even though - he has good ones, he has to. Some mornings he wakes up and can still feel the fading edges of whatever happy things his dream-self was enjoying; he never remembers specifics, though.

"You'll help me paint my apartment, right," Felicity mumbles. "Remember - eggshell. In the bedroom, not the living room."

Verdant is fading away, like drops of rain on a watercolor painting. Long drips of silver and chrome, melting into the floor. "I'll help you do whatever," he says. "Whatever you want."

"I want you to smile more," Felicity whispers, and he thinks, what if I did. What would you do, the real you, would you smile back? Could you even fathom it? "I could. You think I couldn't? I so could." Oliver reaches up and touches her ponytail, and she shivers. How can a dream shiver? How can it seem so real and not, at the same time, how is that possible? "What about you, what do you want?"

"I want you," Oliver says, hardly even believing that he just said that, hardly even believing it, period.

Felicity laughs, sounding very far away. "Well, that one's easy," she says, and then he wakes up.

* * *

"So hey, quick quick, I need your signature on these." It's the first time Oliver's seen Felicity this morning; when he got to the office her desk was absent, and he'd only just remembered the meeting with the CDO she'd had scheduled this morning. He would've called her, probably, if he hadn't. "SEC filings. I need to get them sent down to financial before end of business today, and you won't have time to do it later, you've got that thing downtown with SC Bank." She plops the stack on top of his keyboard, smiling when he looks up at her face. She looks normal. Not angry anymore. He thinks. Hopes.

Oliver flips through the stack, scrawling his name next to the arrow-shaped stickers she's helpfully placed next to all the correct signs. She'd shown those to him when she found them in the supply room; she thought it was hilarious. "Do I need to read this?"

"No. Not really." She taps one fingernail against her hip as she waits for him to finish, the other resting on the back of his chair. He can feel the warmth from her skin on the back of his neck. "Hey, you look better today. Did you sleep well?"

"Actually, I did," he says. She raises her eyebrows at him. "No one is more surprised than me, trust me."

"I was thinking it was the coffee," she says, a teasing lilt to her voice that's more reassuring than any of her smiles would be. "I can't believe you stopped for Sundollar and didn't get me a mocha. Shame on you."

He had bought her a mocha, but when she wasn't at her desk he gave it to Isabel's secretary instead. Not that he's going to tell her that. "I was in the mood for a latte," he says, finishing up the last signature. "Next time, Ms. Smoak, I'll correct my grave oversight."

"Good enough for me," she says, holding out her hands. He drops the stack of paperwork in her arms, and she gives a comic grimace, grunting in mock strain as she hefts the pile up against her chest. "Thanks."

"Are you coming with me? To the bank meeting?"

"I've got a thing with your lawyer, he wants to go over the employment contract for the new CIO we just hired," she says apologetically, already on her way back out to her desk, "but I'll see you later? Tonight?"

"Right," he says, heroically resisting the urge to leap up and open the door for her. She'd just make fun of him anyway. "Then I'll see you at lunch. The mocha's on me."

"I'll hold you to that, Mr. Queen," Felicity says, with a smile. She uses her back to open the door, sliding out of his office as quickly as she'd come in. Oliver absolutely does not watch her walk back to her desk through the glass.

He picks up his coffee cup and drains the rest of it quickly, grimacing slightly. It's gone cold. Maybe he'll get another one later.


End file.
